Have you ever finished a book and cried because it was over? Millions of readers did just that this weekend as Harry Potter came to an end. What a testament to the joys of reading! Thoreau said, "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." Many will look back on July, 2007 and remember the 7th Harry Potter book.
Rowling will remember it always too as she spends her fortune. Borders sold over a million and a half copies alone. I remember the furor when the first book came out and certain people wanted to ban it. Librarians and readers got up in arms and saved the books from would-be book Nazis. The books have themselves promoted an upsurge in reading (especially among boy readers) that the reading world has not seen since readers in the 1800's couldn't wait for the next chapter of the Dickens novels.
Although Harry is fantasy, I think this quote from Hemingway fits the series: "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you finished reading, you will really feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ectasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you get so you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
Ernest Hemingway, 1934
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